This summer, when librarian Todd Deck was tasked with purchasing books on diversity for the California State Library, he noticed a gap in queer-inclusive children’s literature in the library’s holdings. He decided which new books to buy, in part, by messaging Lil Miss Hot Mess, a drag queen he follows on Instagram who reads for Drag Queen Story Hour.

“Children can see through you if you're reading a book that you are not in love with,” Deck says, “so you know that these queens are connecting with each book they have selected. I believe that’s a big part of the success for the program.”

Since launching in San Francisco in 2015, Drag Queen Story Hour has expanded to over 25 cities across with the U.S., all in pursuit of a simple goal: use drag to foster a love of reading among children and young adults while showing them that gender isn’t static. Local queens sign up to read children’s stories to groups in full drag, answering questions about growing up, queerness, and gender along the way. They often choose books that resonate with them on a personal level, speaking to queer experience in ways both subtle and obvious — stories about characters who don’t quite fit in, or who embark on a journey to understand it’s okay to be different.

Below, them. spoke with five Drag Queen Story Hour volunteers across the country about their favorite children’s books to read in the program, how kids react to queer protagonists, and the impact queer-affirming stories would have had on younger versions of themselves.

I’m Puerto Rican and have always had a thing for mermaids, so this book holds a special little place in my heart. When I was little, my favorite thing to do when I was swimming was the Ariel hair flip, or I would put my legs together and pretend I had a tail; I grew up in a super religious household and my parents, my mother especially, didn't know what to do with that. I would always hide when pretending to be a mermaid so I wouldn't get into trouble. This book would have shown me that boys can be mermaids, too.

Julián Is a Mermaid is about this little boy who really likes mermaids and dresses up as one. His abuela doesn't think anything of it; she supports him and takes him to what appears to be the annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade. It's just super cute. My favorite part of the book is when his abuela first sees him — Julián has taken down the curtains and uprooted one of her plants to make this costume — and she actually hands him a necklace and says, “You need this.” I’ve read this book five or six times. The best response I got was from a kid’s mother who came up to me after: “He just said, 'Mom, when I grow up I want to be a drag queen mermaid, too.'” It was so cute. I was beyond flattered. Coming from a child, that’s everything.

Neither is a story about a creature named Neither who is part-bunny, part-bird. They live in this land where all the other creatures are either bunnies or birds, so they don’t fit in. Eventually, Neither makes it to the "Land of All," where they meet all these other creatures; there's a cat mixed with a butterfly, and a kind of a hippo-unicorn. This book shows you're not just “neither,” and that you can be little parts of different things — you can be “somewhat” and “whatnot.” The words are so cute in the way that kids can relate to them.

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It's a pretty simple narrative about not fitting into really strict categories, so for me it's really queer in that way. There are obvious allegories to non-binary gender, but I also hope kids who are multiracial or adopted can identify with it, anyone who for some reason doesn’t feel like they fit into norms in their communities. As a reader, I do love when books get you to ask kids questions and interact in that way. Because the language in this book is simple but profound, and the illustrations are so beautiful, this one gives a lot of space to ask: “What’s this?” And the kid’s will say, “A bunny!” And, “What’s that?” And they’ll say, “A bird!” And you get to the page with Neither and they sort of seem a little stumped, but then usually someone says, “It’s a bunny and a bird!”

I spent a lot of my earlier years trying to abolish the feminine aspects of myself, knowing what I was drawn to and knowing it meant ostracization. I feel like this book would've given me a place. I remember reading 10,000 Dresses at an elementary school in Berkeley. Sometimes, when you're a youth worker, you can kind of identify who is queer- or trans-leaning, especially when you come as a drag queen. After, someone who was assigned female at birth came up to me and talked about how they didn't like wearing dresses but loved this book. They felt seen and validated, which is interesting because they read as more masculine to me, but were attracted to the fact that someone was leaning to a different side of the spectrum.

10,000 Dresses is about Bailey, who is presumably of transgender experience and has recurring dreams about walking up a staircase. On each flight there's a marvelous, magnificent dress made of otherworldly materials — in some cases, you can see a billion crystal chandeliers — and it’s very majestic and surreal. Bailey asks each person in their family to help them make a dress and they all say, “No, you’re a boy.” So Bailey ultimately runs and runs and finally finds a house where there's an older girl on the front porch, and they embark on a journey of making all these other dresses.

What I really appreciate about this book is that it's about chosen family. With a lot of children's books that explore difference, everything is tied up neatly in a bow. And as we all know, as queer people, that isn't always the case, especially with biological family, and so I like that it doesn't sugarcoat it, and it embraces the fact that there is going to be some familial rejection, too.

I discovered this book because a school district in North Carolina cut Jacob’s New Dress from its curriculum last year, due to complaints from conservative groups. I found it funny because they replaced it, probably to stick it to the group, with Red: A Crayon's Story, which is basically a story about a crayon that is mislabelled — he’s a blue crayon but the factory mislabelled him as being red — that speaks to the hearts of children who are genderfluid or transgender. Everyone makes him draw things that would normally be red, like strawberries and ants, and when another crayon asks him to draw the ocean he says, “I don't think I can, because I'm red.” The other crayon really encourages him to try and everybody is amazed by what he draws.

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My favorite part of the book is the end, when Red starts embracing who they are and everyone follows suit, because this was sort of me when I finally came out to my family. My mom was worried about what people would think (I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, so not the most liberal city) and I finally told her, “If you are proud of me, they will be proud of me,” and it was true. Even my 98-year-old grandmother was like, “Oh, that's fine,” so it was all about finding pride from within and living my life out loud. As a kid, I really think a book like Red would've helped my mom more than it would've helped me; the message and the metaphors would’ve really resonated with her. For me, The Runaway Bunny was my favorite children's book, not for any other reason than the part where he runs away to join the circus.

This book isn’t really LGBTQ, but it is drag queen-esque. It’s about a little girl named Kiely who thinks she’s famous. She goes around saying she's grander than everyone else, and treats her family like they are her assistants, photographers, and chauffeurs. She's a little big-headed, but I think that's my favorite part, that she's so delusional for a little kid. It made me laugh. She stumbles at the end of the book and her family is still there to cheer her on, and she realizes that her family is not the help — they're her loving family.

I was outed when I was little, so I would do my own thing, but once my family came to terms with everything, they were there supporting me, and that touched me in a weird way. Doing drag now, they're my staff — always doing all these crazy things for me. At readings, because I'm a bearded drag queen, I get a lot of, “Oh, you're a man,” but most of the kids are really engaged. I have a lot of kids that scoot closer and try to help me turn the pages.

them, a next-generation community platform, chronicles and celebrates the stories, people and voices that are emerging and inspiring all of us, ranging in topics from pop culture and style to politics and news, all through the lens of today’s LGBTQ community.